Please Don’t Read the Comments

In this episode of Tricky, Heather and Emily talk to Sarah L. Roberts, the woman who coined the term “commercial content moderation,” about how elements of online discourse are governed by outsourced and unseen low-paid workers, who sift through “the grossness of humanity.”

And they ask Andrew Losowsky of the Coral Project whether newsrooms and journalists still have a part to play in fostering civil discourse, on and offline. Plus: the bubonic plague, dance mania, Karen Carpenter, and pointy shoes.